Graverra shook away her jitters and approached the dungeon core’s beating, floating, heart-self. Given the situation, she couldn’t help but wonder again why he’d chosen this form. After all that fuss over squishy mortal bodies… But she guessed they could discuss that in a moment. She hoped.

“So I just… bite… you.” Graverra grimaced as she spoke and shuffled around to the core’s side so maybe he didn’t have to watch this. She certainly wouldn’t want to. She hoped she got a choice.

“That seems the easiest route, if you can manage.”

Graverra gave what she wanted to be an affirmative but just wound up sounding like an uncertain whine as she continued to psych herself up. “Alright then… Here I go…”

She can’t help herself from leaning in slowly, even if it might be best done and over with as quick as she can manage. Ignoring the part about powers beyond her mortal comprehension, she was still slowly stuffing her face into one huge, throbbing piece of meat.

Unfortunately, Graverra was not unfamiliar with the sensation of biting into raw, fibrous, muscle - she still didn’t need to for most rituals, definitely not the ones she determined to keep on hand, but those rumors had to start somewhere… And most necromancers had to start somewhere as well.

That was how she was able to tell herself this had a chance of working. It was only another ritual. You exchanged rings, among other things, for a marriage pact, and what else did the dungeon core have to give of himself, anyway? It made sense.

Graverra’s lip curled as she moved in so that her teeth finally scraped against the sinewy flesh. She squeaked, trying to the core one last ditch warning that she was really about to do it, then closed her mouth around the dungeon core’s still beating heart.

The entire room shuddered like every time before, but it was less of a growl and more of a groan. Graverra would have pulled a face again if not for the fact that her teeth were tangled in muscle. Her nose wrinkled as she tried to bite harder and faster. How Valerea did anything remotely similar to this on a regular basis no less, Graverra was even less understanding. And she had been bitten before.

There was an audible tearing sound when she pulls away. The core cries out then. It made Graverra want to gag, but she most definitely would not be trying anything like this ever again in the event it didn’t work. With her mouth full of dungeon core, Graverra sat back and wiped her bloodied chin with the back of her hand.

Despite the fact that there really isn’t anywhere for the various valves to be pumping blood towards, there is plenty of it, bubbling up from the mark she’d just left with every still rapid thump of the dungeon core’s heart. But with every spurt, the blood became less, and the muscle knit itself back together. Faster than any spell - holy or necrotic - Graverra had ever seen.

“Do you feel anything?” The core asked and even that sounded like a grimace.

Graverra attempted to answer despite the chunk of heart still resting in her mouth, nonsense noises reminding her she does in fact have to finish chewing. Managing that, she swallowed with a shudder, scraping the taste off her tongue with the back of her teeth.

“Revolted…” She mumbled, but that wasn’t the feeling either of them had been after. It also probably wouldn’t do to embarrass him now. “I don’t know… Not yet?”

She placed a hand over her stomach as if that might help feel whatever. Maybe she did? Maybe it was just nerves. And they weren’t finished yet. They hadn’t exchanged anything. That was how pacts worked.

The dungeon core sighed and when she looked up again had turned around somehow to face her. “My turn?”

Graverra opened her mouth to answer, but it turned out that hadn’t been a question after all.

A suddenly sticky, pulsating muscle jammed into her mouth, down her throat… Or maybe the being smothered came first. She can’t tell how it started by the speed with which it happened, but suddenly she is both split in two and completely enveloped at the same time. Simple as that.

Stars burst in Graverra’s vision, like she’s been knocked out. A situation she is at least a little familiar with. She’d had been unconscious more times than she’d ever care to admit; It came with the territory of being a caster and most especially when she had been a solo caster. It wasn’t ideal, but it happened. Usually, especially after she and Valerae had devised a system, she was back up before she even realized it.

This turned out to not be one of those times.

The odd twilight state of being not quite but nearly dead lingered longer than it should have. Far longer than she had grown to be comfortable with even if she knew as a necromancer that the passage of time was deceptive in this state.

“Well this is new…“ The thought echoed around her similar to the way the core’s voice had, but this wasn’t a room or lair or anything… This was nothing.

Graverra noticed then that the bursts of light and fuzz had crystalized around her, no longer just nonsense visuals before blacking out entirely. Because that’s what happened. She still had to be blacked out and waiting to be revived.

Except for the fact that if she had needed to be a higher level to truly resurrect anyone from being actually dead, then the dungeon core didn’t stand a chance of doing it correctly all by himself.

“That bastard did so kill me!” The thought screeched around her and reverberated into nothingness. At the same moment, the want to ball her fists and stamp her feet drew attention to the fact that Graverra no longer had the necessary appendages for such a thing. No body. Not one she could feel or control or even see for that matter. She had to have something, she still had a consciousness, clearly… That had to count for something.

“If any bit of me is disfigured when I get my body back, I’ll- I’ll…” Her thoughts kept sounding off around her. Maybe she should have been grateful no one was around to hear them - she didn’t really had an end to that particular thought.

A chuckle cut through the emptiness. Not Capo’s or the core’s. Certainly not her own, though it does sound feminine.

“Not this again…” Graverra couldn’t stop the thought even if she’d wanted, but it felt suspiciously similar to falling into a glitched dungeon by mistake.

“Again?” The voice sounded amused. “My, we think very highly of ourselves, don’t we?”

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“We?” Graverra realized then that she couldn’t so much look in any one direction as be painfully aware of her own minuscule place amongst the rest of the darkness. She can’t sense anything else there with her… Unless the points of light were supposed to mean something. “I couldn’t have killed him. And I’m not supposed to be dead.”

“No?” The voice sounded more interested in toying with her than actually answering any questions. So, not a deity preforming afterlife intake, Graverra felt safe to assume. Her’s should have been Strexhin anyway. “My dear, you let a dungeon core rip your silly little mortal shell in two. What did you expect to happen?”

“No I didn’t! Alright, well I did, but he’s going to fix it! He had better fix it…” Graverra stopped herself both because she still wasn’t sure she liked this every thought being voiced thing and because she knew there wasn’t much she could follow up on in this state.

The voice laughed again. “You really believed a core?”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice, did I? I didn’t mean to fall in there and he wouldn’t let me out, which… fair, but I was just going to wind up dead either way- Except I’m not dead, because he said- How do you even know anything? Who are you?”

“It did kill you, Graverra. You are dead. Now, who do you think I am?”

“That’s not fair!” Graverra gasped despite her current lack of lungs. “I didn’t ask to fall in there! Whose fault is that?”

Because if she really were dead, then this was some god, goddess, or something higher up like that. Someone who should have prevented a glitch like that. Although she still should have been speaking with Strexhin… So she couldn’t be dead-dead.

“The core’s fault, I’m sure. Though I wouldn’t expect that one to realize what it’s done. It isn’t fair, but that’s life.”

“I knew it!” If Graverra had hands, she would have covered her mouth. As much as she enjoyed being right, whoever this was didn’t seem particularly pleased with her dungeon core. And if they didn’t like the types of decisions he made… Where did that leave her? “But, I mean, he’s trying to fix it, isn’t he? He didn’t want to kill me.”

“Ha! If that core wanted to be seen as competent it never would have let you live as long as you did.”

“Yeah, but, he loves me.” That was most definitely a thought that wouldn’t have found a voice any other way.

“Oh, how very mortal of you.” Something about the entity’s laugh that time pained Graverra’s consciousness. “The core thinks it’s found an exploit in the System, that one would, and it would have tried with anything else that might have fallen into its meager halls. Dirty cheat…”

“Well, it’s not his fault if it works.” Thankfully, Graverra managed to stop herself before further notions about whose fault that really might be continued to project themselves. “I’m getting the hang of this! Oh…”

“Oh. Oh you would…” The entity hummed in thought, clearly distracted by something else; Though Graverra still had no visual point of reference for anything.

Suddenly it felt very similar to when the core had opened her grimoire without her permission, even without the physical body to keep it on or presence of her grimoire.

Graverra Greame

‘Bride of the Dungeon Core’

Human - Drethiaq, Necromancer

Level - 7 | EXP. - 33%

Health: — /400 | Stamina: — /— | Mana: 3,000/700

In her mind’s eye, or soul’s eye, or whatever part of her still visualized things, Graverra watched as her stats flickered between almost normal and something way, way, off. The most notable changes being a title and her physical stats. A couple of times her own name flickered to ‘Undecided’ and her level jumped between 8, then 0, then switched to a system she wasn’t at all familiar with replacing numbers with written ranks. Instead of race it would read theme, except for the times it swapped back to race just to label her as undead.

“What did he do?!” She hoped that meant it had actually worked, but that wouldn’t have made it any less jarring. Not to mention how much she really did not want to be classified as undead now. She’d only ever wanted to raise them, not become one herself.

“Well can’t you read, Mistress Dungeon Core?” The entity’s tone became haughty again, but it didn’t bother Graverra, too distracted by being called ‘Mistress Dungeon Core’. She’d never had a proper title before.

“So it worked?”

“In its very odd, unnecessary way, I suppose it would have.”

“Would have?”

The entity laughed. “Oh dear, did you really think we could just allow dungeon cores to go… unionizing with adventurers like this? Absolutely not. It shouldn’t be done and it most definitely should not be done the way you two chose to do it. Eugh!”

“That wasn’t my idea!” The thought jumped out first, then, “You’re not going to let me go back? You have to, we had a deal.”

“I would really rather you didn’t.” But the fact that the entity didn’t outright say no struck Graverra as odd. Maybe it was a good thing?

“So, then I go back to where I was before… right?” After everything she’d just been through, it would be a bit of a disappointment, but she could work with that. Branimir and Valery would be sorry for abandoning her, she’d make sure of it.

“Oh no. I can’t do that now. The core has shown you too much. You can already feel it now, can’t you? The ability to create from nothing.”

“Well, I am a necromancer…”

The entity laughed again. It hurt again. That had to be on purpose. “I told Strexhin you types would be insufferable… No, I mean actually from nothing. No components, not that watered down stuff you call mana. You can interface with the System now, weakly. Don’t you dare try it right now if you want any hope of being returned as you were. We can’t let that sort of thing wander freely and the sudden absence of it would drive you mad.”

Graverra was thankful for the warning, even if it was begrudgingly so. She knew she would have tried otherwise. “So, I could go back? Believe me, I wish I was a quick study, but I know I’m not. I won’t be able to remember anything, especially if I haven’t tried-”

“You’re not good at listening either. The absence of it will drive you mad.”

People already thought that about her, she was pretty sure, but Graverra managed not to make any such remark audible. “But- But I’m not dead, or I’d be talking to Strexhin right now. And- And you can’t kill me, that wouldn’t be fair. So what? I’m just… I’m just stuck?”

“No. No, you won’t be talking to Strexhin.” The entity was quick to shut that down. Odd. “And I have no interest in keeping you here.”

The entity spent another moment grumbling to herself in thought, “I suppose you could be allowed to be your own core…”

Graverra thought on it too. At first blush, it didn’t seem like a terrible idea. Especially if once again her only other option was ceasing to exist. And she had been thinking about it, she might actually make a decent dungeon core. She’d certainly make something better looking than-

“I’d be alone then, wouldn’t I?”

“Not forever,” The entity answered plainly. “Eventually you’d be able to host all sorts of things, if that’s what you’re after.”

“They’d just be stupid mobs though. And- And then he’d just be alone again. Did you make my core? Er- The one I’ve been talking to? How come you didn’t give him a name?”

“Cores don’t need names. And of course I made it, though it seems determined to make me regret it. That’s why I have to clean up this mess.”

“Well,” Graverra bristled at the implications. “I still don’t think it was his fault, he said he couldn’t go on building with me there and I think he really would have rather done that. And he said he’d only been a core for a couple days and if I’m supposed to be overwhelmed by all this, then I can’t imagine just being thrown into it with no prior experience with anything is supposed to go any better. I mean, at least I’ve got some dungeon runs under my belt, he’s got what? Or was he something else first? Valerae liked to talk about this one dungeon where-”

“Ah, ah, ah… I won’t be baited into that.” The entity interrupted. Although in Graverra’s defense, some of those questions really had been rhetorical. “But if you’re so certain you can do better than me, maybe I will leave you to each other. It might be fun to watch… And I could always end it whenever I saw fit.”

“Oh.” Why did getting what she wanted sound like a threat? If this was who the dungeon core answered to, no wonder he had been so touchy before. Even taking into account the idea Graverra might have been an attempt to cheat the System, she couldn’t blame him for wanting a little edge. “If that’s what you really want…”

“Hm. Yes.” The entity sounded decided now, for better or worse. “That core can lie in the bed it’s made, and you… You chose this.”

“I didn’t really. I mean, it wasn’t much of a-” It was probably for the best then that despite surely still being in a sate of unconsciousness, Graverra felt herself blacking out once again.